Thank you to everyone for the input and discussion about potential moderators, I am pleased with the tenor of the discussion thus far.

I do want to clear up a rather serious misconception that seems to exist that the EnviroLink Forum is "pro" anything. The only positions EnviroLink as an organization has ever taken are related to freedom of speech issues. This forum is for the open discussion of environmental and animal concerns issues. I certainly expect that a level of respect and decorum will be maintained in the discourse that happens here. Obviously everyone slips up from time to time, obviously there are going to be those on all sides of the issues that are only here to disrupt. Sorting through that is not easy and the means for doing so are not black and white.

There are plenty of places for people to go online where they can hang out with the choir. I have always intended these forums to be a place where those that disagree can come together to learn from each other. If you are looking for constant reinforcement of your current belief patterns (regardless of what they are), I encourage you to visit those other sites. If you really want to try to learn more about and perhaps learn to understand those that may hold different views from yours (in a respectful manner), then please keep coming back here and work to make it a better place.

Obviously while that is my intention, the implementation has often fallen short. I sometimes get so angry at some idiotic statement that someone I disagree with made that I flame them. That's going to happen from time to time with everyone. The real question is are the participants in a given discussion behaving most of the time, or are they obviously just here to disrupt what could be a very productive dialogue.

It's your call to decide whether this place is meeting your needs or not. If it is not, and is not living up to the hopes that I have laid forth, than either help to fix it or leave. It's really that simple.

I am glad you made the clarification, as I was going to ask about it this evening after thinking on some of the posts in this thread. I believe the job of the moderator is to enforce the rules of the forum not to determine the rules. That job is yours and I would expect whomever is chosen to be given a guideline of what you want to watch out for. The copyright materials, spam, and the like are the first things. Whether you want to have a series of recipes, as Fos said from either side of the fence, or massive sets of links to other sites should be your decision and the moderators will be tasked with enforcement. Ditto, for segregating the posters into relative groups, which is again a decision that should not be within the power of a mere moderator.

Maybe a definition of what you feel a moderator would do might help in this matter too.

_________________With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none” Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."Albert Einstein

I thought that envirolink had in the late 90's a listserve which was sending out an average 70 animal rights news stories daily

could i ask what your thoughts are on vegan and vegetarian lifestyles

EnviroLink was started in 1991 and has provided over 500 environmental and animal concerns organizations with free e-mail, mailing list and website hosting, as well as providing two different clearinghouses of information: http://www.envirolink.org and http://www.animalconcerns.org While we don't provide hosting services any more (we merged those services with igc.org), our websites are still quite active. I'm not sure which of the several thousand mailing lists that used to be hosted at EnviroLink you're referring to, but I know there were many relating to animal rights, welfare and a plethora of other issues.

If you google my name, or EnviroLink, I think you'll find a bit more information about who considers EnviroLink friend or foe. But really, most folks (on all sides of issues) have misinterpreted why EnviroLink has always existed and the fact that the organization has never taken a position on any issue other than those of the rights to freedom of expression.

I think that people have the right to enjoy whatever lifestyles they choose, as long as they are within reason. I do not believe I am in a position to judge others' lifestyles, except when I think they are not within reason or I am having a bad day.

but it is interesting that Envirolink supported animal rights communication with lists, but not to my knowledge, hunter communication.

You're probably right... although I think in the early days we helped Trout Unlimited and National Wildlife Federation with their first websites. Then again, we also hosted the first websites for PeTA, Earth First!, FARM, Greenpeace USA, Defenders of Wildlife, Audubon Society, SHAC (until we started receiving cease and desist court orders), and over 500 others. As you may or may not guess, that represents a rather broad spectrum within the enviro and animal concerns movements.

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In that sense it seems true that the percentage of animalrights and welfare in Envirolink has declined significantly inrelation to hunters while nationally the number of hunters declines, (now below 4% of the population) (18 to 24 year olds .. down 1/3) as fewer people believe that hunters have a right to stalk the woods.

What is the point of this? I couldn't care less about poll numbers of any sort, as they are all politically driven (right, left, center... they all bore me)

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You are in Pennsylvania... a state with an unusually high number of hunters.. but elsewhere.. hunters have less influence

You probably haven't read my senior thesis, which was published at a state-wide conference on deer control (far too long ago, you can find it somewhere on Google). The topic was on the ethics of deer population control. I doubt you would agree with many of my conclusions (too many deer in PA for the carrying capacity of the land, must be controlled one way or another or a major ecological collapse will occur). But we both are digressing WAY off topic... we should take it to the enviro area of the site, since in my opinion it is an issue of science and ecology.

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-----my biggest concern is thread removal

and what would be the policies on thread removal

... I don't mean the copyright issue which has been outlined

but a hunter moderator having the power to remove ARA threads

What makes you think, based on what I have requested, that anything would radically change around here? If a moderator abuses their power, they lose their priveleges... I make that call since I control the board. I honestly don't even know yet how much "power" a moderator will actually have (I need to look into this within this software). Regardless, I will not tolerate abuses of power (other than my own... heh).

Ok, between private messages and what people are posting here, it seems there is the beginning of some winnowing down happening. So far, it appears to me that the following three folks are generally (though not universally) thought to be good choices:

1) Sandra John

2) Fosgate

3) Satan Jr (for the love of... can you just change your name back already to what it was way back when? I will help you change your user name so you don't lose all of your posts... The thought of having Satan's spawn helping me moderate here is a bit disconcerting.)

Any more comments, serious concerns, etc. Sandra... do you even want the job? Do you know that you've been nominated??

Yeah, it can be rather controversial among those who don't know any better.

Fosgate's sarcasm about a B12 article.. an immoderate moderator?

People have opinions. People get pissed. People are going to be moderators. The only question in my mind (and hopefully in everyone else's) is, "will ____ be able to help moderate fairly without abusing their power?" I do not want to spend my days reading every post in the Animal Concerns area and checking for copyright violations, exceedingly off-topic remarks, etc. and need help doing it.

I have yet to express an opinion about anyone nominated, other than my observation that there seem to be three people whose names are coming up.